Like most fairy tales, this one started when a romantic moment sparked wild imaginings.
In the not-so-distant past, Anthony Johnson, a dishwasher with dubious prospects, and Shaunte Nance, local prep basketball standout, walked along the Tacoma waterfront on a chilly night.
In the screenplay, this will appear as a typical young-couple montage: skipping stones, carving their names and the date on pilings, sharing dreams that would seem too crazy to put into words in any less fanciful context.
They talked of the usual things, their feelings for one another, their hopes for the future.
And then Nance pulled out the tough love.
Johnson had been a poor student at Stadium High. He could be so much more, Nance told him. He had been a mediocre player on a bad basketball team. You’re better than that, Nance told him.
She had seen him play in pickup games at the Y, and she knew talent when she saw it. But nothing great could happen without dedication. And he had shown so little motivation on his own. She would change that.
“I told him, ‘You have to keep playing basketball,’ ” she said. “I’d seen him play and I knew he was way more talented than some of those guys who were playing in college. He tells me now that all along he had hoped to go to the NBA, but he never put forth the effort.
“What he needed,” she said in a meaningful tone, “was a kick in the butt. And I gave it to him.”
Johnson can remember every detail about that night, how far they walked along Ruston Way, the temperature, the stars, the hours-long conversation, and mostly the convincing pep talk Shaunte gave him that night.
He recalls the resolution he made verbatim: “I said, ‘OK, I’m not going to stop until I do something great with this game.’”
ONE UNFORGETTABLE GAME
Anthony Johnson may enjoy great moments in the NCAA tournament (the 6-foot-3 senior guard will lead 14th-seeded Montana against No. 3 seed New Mexico in the first round Thursday), or perhaps in an NBA career, but it’s unlikely he’ll match the drama of last week’s Big Sky Conference championship game between his Grizzlies and Weber State.
Weber, playing on its own court, held a 22-point lead.
Montana coach Wayne Tinkle told Johnson that he needed to take over and be aggressive. If they had any chance for a second-half comeback, it was up to Johnson. He could do it.
Why wouldn’t Johnson believe it? It was no more an absurd notion than his being in that situation in the first place.
In the final 20 minutes of play, Johnson – by himself – outscored Weber State, 34-25. He finished with 42 points, a conference-tournament record. How thoroughly did he “carry” his team? He scored Montana’s final 21 points in a stunning 66-65 upset.
“The only thing on my mind was to win,” said Johnson, who enters the NCAA tournament averaging 19.6 points per game. “I just kept thinking, ‘Do what it takes to get the ball up and get the win.’ ”
Beyond that, don’t ask Johnson for elaboration. Men who are in trances don’t have time to notice details.
“After the game, people were telling me I got all these records, but I had no idea at all what happened. It was kind of like that zone that everybody talks about when it seems like anything is possible,” he said. “I looked at the clock and I had a mission … to score. I knew they were counting on me, and I wanted to do whatever I could to give my team the best chance to win.”
He’d had big games before, mostly in junior college.
“But nothing of this magnitude, down (22) in the championship game, on a national stage, with the winner making it to the dance … it was unbelievable,” he said. “I’ll never forget that night, even though a lot of it is still a blur.”
USA Today, ESPN, and any number of regional and national media have called Johnson since the performance. But the most important call was the one he made the second he stepped off the court. It was to his wife, Shaunte. After all, she is the reason any of this was possible.
‘PURE LOVE’
With a father who was not in the picture much as a youth, Anthony Johnson carried responsibilities beyond those of the typical high school boy who has the luxury of focusing on sports or school.
To keep the family afloat. His mother, Lillie Hicks, worked her regular 40-hour week at a mental-health home, and then pulled extra 16-hour shifts on Saturdays and Sundays. Johnson dutifully took charge of his younger brothers, keeping them active and out of trouble.
“He made sure they were always with him,” Hicks said of Anthony’s shepherding of his brothers. “I worked a lot, and he helped me tremendously.”
This early-onset adulthood surely diverted his focus, as he averaged an ordinary 12 points a game in high school and registered a less-than-average GPA.
“I knew he had a good brain, but he had to want it,” Hicks said. “I tried everything with him, but he had to want that education.”
After Johnson left Stadium, reality struck him in the face like a wet dishrag.
“I quickly realized that I had no opportunities – nothing – not even junior colleges. Nothing.”
Well, it wasn’t quite nothing. He found that he was prepared for at least one position in the job market.
“I got on at The Lobster Shop as a dishwasher … $9 an hour, I think it was. At the time, my mom always wanted to talk about the future, but I wasn’t really concerned; I just wanted to try to make some money and help my mom out. But she was always telling me I needed to think about the long run and look to the future.”
About a month after graduation, Johnson began seeing his best friend’s former girlfriend, Shaunte Nance, a two-time league MVP player at Foss High.
Nance immediately respected Johnson’s maturity and his devotion to his family, and the way in which he put them above his own concerns.
“He had a lot of other responsibilities that other kids didn’t have,” she said. “He took on the role of man of the house from an early age. Those were his priorities that he had to take care of first, and school and basketball had to be a little bit on the back burner.”
It’s understandable that Nance would have a natural sensitivity to a young man with such concerns, because her own childhood had been so unstable.
She gave a brief description of her home life to Bill Speltz for a recent article in the Missoulian:
“Growing up with someone I thought was my father that passed away when I was 4, a mother that passed away when I was 12, my grandfather passing away four months after my mom died, four months after that my grandma getting throat cancer. … Living with family members, being adopted, living back with my grandmother … I’ve been moving, shuffling. My whole life is being able to adapt and transition in different situations, being a chameleon. I’ve used it as a positive.”
She adapted quite well, in fact, and earned a scholarship to Northwest Nazarene in Nampa, Idaho. But she didn’t go back for her second season there. Johnson couldn’t let her leave town again.
Johnson pulled a ploy that may seem too sentimental even for a Disney screenplay.
“I needed to pull some big move because I couldn’t stand for her to leave, but I couldn’t afford a ring,” he said. “So out of desperation, I proposed to her, and I gave her this little black rubber band (as a ring).”
Fortunately for Johnson, Nance is one of those “it’s the thought that counts” women. She not only didn’t leave, she vowed to love, honor, tutor and promote Johnson.
When the coach at Yakima Valley Community College heard that Nance was not returning to Northwest Nazarene, he offered her a roster spot.
It sounded good to Nance under one non-negotiable condition: They take Johnson for the men’s team.
Remember, at this point, Johnson had been out of organized basketball for a year and a half, with his lone exposure being at the YMCA where, apparently, his game had improved considerably.
“She told them, ‘I’m not coming unless you invite my husband to play,’” Johnson said. “They gave me a two-day tryout to test me and see what my skills were. And when I got the chance, I really went after it hard and played my butt off.”
On Nov. 1, 2006, the two married. And Nance got tough with him again.
“I was on him nonstop,” Nance said of Johnson’s academic efforts. “I was the stickler about school. We took every single class together. I worked with him on how to do his papers, how to study … which we always did together. And, actually, he’s an extremely smart student and has a higher GPA than I do.”
And in his sophomore season, Johnson led an undermanned YVCC men’s team to the 2008 NWAACC championship, winning an MVP award in the process.
Suddenly, NCAA Division I programs were after this former dishwasher and gym-rat player. They wanted him. But he had one demand: They had to offer a chance on their women’s team to his wife.
When Lillie Hicks heard that her son paid back Shaunte in kind for her fierce loyalty two years earlier when they went to junior college, “I was so proud of him … it made me cry,” she said.
“I told Shaunte that I was so glad she saw something special in him and gave him the motivation he needed,” Hicks said. “Shaunte came along and it was pure love. For me, she was a godsend.”
TRIUMPH OF LOVE
Johnson and Nance-Johnson both look back on the times when they would stay up all night, a committee of two, a mutual-admiration society, and talk about the future. They each could see greatness in the other even when they weren’t able to see it in themselves.
And so neither is bashful about labeling this success the product of a love story.
“Of course it is,” Nance-Johnson said. “It shows that love endures; love is unconditional. Sometimes love is about making sacrifices. And when you’re in love, sometimes you do crazy things. And when you need to sacrifice, you do it, and you pay the other back when you can. I think it’s that give-and-take that makes this the ultimate love story.”
In five years together, Nance-Johnson said she’s never seen Anthony “get down or not have his head up; I’ve never once heard him complain. He’s always felt as if he were on a mission, and that’s what makes him such a fantastic basketball player.”
And her?
“Not only is she a great person, but she’s helped me become a better man,” he said. “I can’t even put into words what she means to me. I’m just forever grateful and will appreciate it all forever.”
In the recent Missoulian story, Nance’s character was further revealed. It was reported that she has committed to donating a kidney to a brother suffering from renal disease in Seattle as soon as he is healthy enough for a transplant.
And now that talk about a possible pro career may not be just the idle musing of a Tacoma dishwasher, we may wonder if any of this has changed Johnson.
“Here’s what he’s said all along, all the time,” Nance-Johnson said. “He says that someday he wanted to be in a position to go back and help his mother and his family and his community. He wants to be a success for everybody else more than he wants it for himself. That’s the kind of heart he’s had all along.”
Hicks gets a little choked up with pride and emotion when she talks about them.
“I look at all those kids have gone through, all they overcame,” she said. “They said, ‘Hey, we’re going to do it … but we’re going to do it together.’ I just love them both to death for that.”
Dave Boling: 253-597-8440
dave.boling@thenewstribune.com
